


Season of the Witch

by ThroughtheMirrorDarkly



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Naruto
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Aster Needs a Hug, Aster is Rin, BAMFs, Bad Guys Made Them Do It, Chakra System Freeform, Don't Post To Another Site, Drama & Romance, F/M, Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I Update When I Update, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Kakashi Needs a Hug, Magical Realism, Memory Loss, No Beta We Die Like Ninja, Plot Twists, Rookie nine - Freeform, Shinobi War, Slow Build, Team as Family, The People are the Village, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Weird Plot Shit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:33:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22747123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThroughtheMirrorDarkly/pseuds/ThroughtheMirrorDarkly
Summary: The Death God demanded a high toll in order for Aster Potter to protect those that she loves most, but is the cost too high? Torn between the person she was and who she is now, Aster is caught in a freefall with no way to stop herself. Hatake Kakashi is a man consumed by tragedy, and the weight of ghosts rest on his shoulders. But not all ghosts are buried in his memories as he will soon learn. Will they be swallowed by the growing darkness, or can they change the tide of their fates?
Relationships: Aster Potter/Hatake Kakashi, Haruno Sakura/Uzumaki Naruto, Hatake Kakashi/Nohara Rin, More to be added - Relationship
Comments: 11
Kudos: 42





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: Canon? What is Canon? Why is Canon? Why do I confuse it with Canon? Answer to the last one, is because I have the attention span of a rat and don't pay attention!

The Season of the Witch 

By ThroughtheMirrorDarkly

* * *

ONE 

_Konohagakure_

_3rd March 1994_

It was a peaceful day. 

Not a single cloud in the blue sky and the sun was warm, shining down on the swaying limbs of the grove of trees. Birds hopped from branch to branch, singing so sweetly and the birth of spring had all but chased away the last vestiges of winter in the Village Hidden in the Leaves. Nohora Rin still felt a chill that ran into the marrow of her bones, and not even this beautiful, serene day could make it fade away. Her brown eyes stared at the monolith with a hollow gaze, tracing down the long list of names inscribed into the stone that had long since become a familiar litany inside of her head until her eyes landed on the name that brought her here every day like clockwork. 

_Uchiha Obito._

Her breath entered her lungs like shards of broken glass and her heart felt like it was lodged painfully in the middle of her throat. Two and half months weren’t enough to dull the pain of grief that swallowed up and eclipsed her entire world. Rin choked back a sob, burying her face into her hands and her body trembled like a leaf. Obito had been exuberant, filled with life and a determination that was unparalleled, and it had been snuffed out in a single mission gone horribly wrong. The memory stirred against her will—of Obito trapped underneath the boulder, crushed and dying. His last breaths raspy and rattled through him, a pained smile stretched upon his lips and his white teeth stained red. He joked while he was dying, joked about giving Kakashi his left eye as a gift for becoming a jonin three years too late. She recalled kneeling down beside him, his hand clasped so tightly in hers while she mentally prepared herself for the eye transplant. 

On his last breath, Obito told he loved her. A dying confession sealed with a bloody kiss, and guilty that she couldn’t return his feelings in the way that he wanted her to, the feelings that she felt were platonic and familial, but no less potent. The kiss was…impulsive, a combination to give him something back for the unshakeable loyalty that he had given her, and perhaps to assuage her own guilt that she couldn’t save him. A small, chaste kiss and Obito died with a smile on his face, and Rin was left to pick up the pieces of her life that felt torn asunder. A blurry and numb state followed, Rin barely recalled the eye transplant or blowing up the Kannabi bridge and completely their mission. She vaguely recalls leaning on Kakashi shoulder as they wearily trekked back towards base camp, the shredded feeling of her heart that they had to leave Obito’s body behind. 

An unfortunate hazard of the mission, is what it was called. The mission was completed, and that was all that matter in the cold logic of the shinobi world. Rin just couldn’t view it like that. It was such a taciturn and icy way to view a loss, and an “unfortunate hazard” didn’t even come close to describing the tragedy and grief that had shaken Team Minato. Jiraiya-sama and Orochimaru-sama had been dispatched to recover Obito’s body, once they had gotten back to the base camp and informed everyone of what had happened. The area had been demolished and all the bodies, even those of the enemies were nowhere in sight. It had been another devastating and unexpected blow, and Minato had fought for Kakashi and Rin to be recalled to Kohona. 

Rin was originally relieved to get such a reprieve from the warfare. The missions had steadily been rising in danger, and it was more often than not that a mission turned into a battleground since the Third Shinobi War was in full swing. Instead, the village was not the welcoming and warm place that she had once knew. Instead, Rin viewed it with new eyes—eyes that had been clouded with cynicism and despair. The people and the places were stifling and bleak, pinned underneath the dark clouds of hostilities. All she had been hoping for was a bit of comfort in the familiar things to ease the near constant ache inside of her chest. 

Instead of home comfort, she found herself under the inquiry of the Uchiha Clan and the Council. She had to relive through the trauma of that day while Uchiha Fugaku accused her of bloodline theft—originally she had been accused of conspiracy to murder, but a mind walk session with Yamanaka Inoichi proved that there had been no foul play or murder to support the claim. The Uchiha Clan Head seemed to want retribution for the supposed slight against his Clan, demanding her demotion and dishonorable discharge. Kakashi was protected from the brunt of Fugaku’s rage because of his Clan status, but Rin, who came from a Civilian Clan, had no such protection. She had to endure all the questions and scrutiny, days of it that wore on her mind and soul. It felt like any reprieve would cost her very soul, but then Minato-sensei stepped in with the Third Hokage’s backing to put an end to a pointless trial. 

In the end, Rin was suspended from activity duty for a month—the war couldn’t afford to lose a medic for more than that—and she had to sign a contract swearing to never perform such surgery on an Uchiha unless it served the interests of said clan. As soon as the judgment was rendered, Rin fled from the tower with her eyes glistening with tears and rushed across the village to come to sit in front of the Stone Memorial. It had been erected only weeks after this war had started and already had too many names—and more names would be added until the war’s end. 

Scalding hot tears rolled across her cheeks and she reached up touching her cheeks. She barely had the energy to put herself together let alone to use the specialized paint to put on her clan markings this morning. It was a struggle to pull herself out of bed and face the Council head on, feeling as if a stiff breeze would knock her over. When was the last time she ate? When was the last time she drank? Her mouth was parched, but her stomach turned at the thought of sustenance. Swallowing down a whimper, Rin dropped her hands into her lap and her fingers curled into her palms. Uneven nails from where she had chewed on them until bloody, but she didn’t even so much as flinch at the small prick of pain. 

A familiar hum of chakra like the crackle of lightning in a distant storm, signaled the approach of her other teammate, Hatake Kakashi. His footsteps were soft yet purposefully loud enough as to not startle her. He came to a halt to her left, casting a shadow over her and blocking out the sun. No reprimand came from him about how shinobi weren’t supposed to cry. It was a testament to how shaken he had been by Obito’s death to no longer sprout the shinobi code like it were gospel, and how he had withdrawn to quietly reevaluate things in their line of work. 

_Or maybe I’m just being too optimistic,_ Rin thought, wearily. 

There was a rigidness in the air of things that hadn’t been said, but Rin couldn’t find it in her to break the silence first. Her friendship with Kakashi was tentative, but very important. It had come about after her girlish infatuation had melted away after getting to know the aloof and stern boy a little bit better, and after three years being on a team with him, having watched each-others’ back through countless missions, she was comfortable in calling him a friend. In some ways, she felt like she had failed Kakashi as much as she failed Obito on that mission. It had been one of the reasons that she had been avoiding him these last few weeks. 

“Every day, you come here,” Kakashi spoke, his hand reaching up to touch his hitae which had been slanted over his left eye to conceal the red eye that laid beneath. Obito’s gift was a painful reminder, a burden that he would carry with him for the rest of his life. 

It was a burden she carried, too, albeit in a different way. She was the one who had cut the eye out of Obito’s skull and had placed into Kakashi’s. Her hands had been stained with both of their blood and that broke something vital in her soul that she didn’t think she would ever get it back. Rin scrubbed at her swollen and blurry eyes, her nose clogged and her breathing slightly labored. “I have to,” she whispered out, unable to give any other explanation for her compulsion. Every day she found herself in front of this stone with a sea of regrets and no way to heal them. “I _need_ to.” 

“…why?” Kakashi’s voice was soft, barely more than a whisper. 

A wind cut through the valley, stirring up the loose strands of her hair and they fluttered about wildly around her face. Her eyes were dull and distant, cheeks flushed from all her crying and her chapped lips were parted ever so slightly. “Because…” Rin said, her voice very faint to her own ears and she wipe the tearstains off her cheeks with the back of her hand. “As long as I hold his memory in my heart and keep him in my memories, so he’ll stay alive through me, and be with me no matter where I’ll go. I come here to remember and hold on tight to that, because that way he’ll never be forgotten.” 

Several seconds passed in silence, and then Kakashi knelt on his knees beside her, resting his palms in his lap. And that is how Minato found them hours later, underneath a red afternoon sky and paying vigil to the boy who life and death had fundamentally changed them. All of them were completely unaware of the changes and tragedies still left to come. 

* * *

_Konohagakure_

_9th July 2009_

_15 Years Later_

A silver haired man in the standardized ANBU uniform knelt in front of the cenotaph that had been sheltered and unmarked by time due to the seals engraved at the base of the stone. At his waist and clipped on his belt was an Inu mask that was splattered with blood and scraps along the cheek made by a wickedly sharp blade. The dawn had just broken along the horizon when the famed Copy Ninja, Hatake Kakashi reentered the village. There was a weariness that lined his bones and exhaustion that filled his soul each time he returned from a ‘suicide’ mission; at twenty-eight, Kakashi felt like an old man that had lived too long and had seen far too much. 

So his ritualistic habits brought him here for a little bit of an escape before he had to march up to the Hokage’s tower and report in. His tardiness and seemingly laziness stemmed from deeper issues in his psyche that he hadn’t even come close to letting anyone touch or get a glimpse of because that would require him openly displaying his inner demons and Kakashi just couldn’t do that. So instead, he came here to get solace from the dead and cope the only way he had known how to. It had been Rin’s way of coping before— _lightning crackled around his hand, the sound like chirping birds, and he lunged forward, and then there was Rin, his hand through her chest and so much blood_ —and he swallowed down the bile that rushed up his throat. 

It hadn’t been an overly difficult mission, but one of the Ame missing-nin had been young, only twelve or thirteen. Dark hair and hazel eyes, much like Rin. His orders had been explicit in stating that none were to be left alive. It was a tumultuous time in the Elemental Nations, where missions were becoming much more difficult and it was one political misstep from tumbling headfirst into another war. His team, Team Seven, had been temporarily disbanded about two years ago after the village had mostly recovered from the invasion led by Yahiko, leader of the Akatsuki—a group of S-Ranked missing-nins—and shinobi from Amegakure. The leader of Amegakure, Hanzō of the Salamander, had official disavowed the actions taken by the rogue group and had offered his full support to Konoha without hesitation. 

It left a sour and bitter taste on his tongue. He was not well versed in the political machinations, having done his best to outrun his clan obligations and avoid dogmatic farces, but he had seen how pleased Shimura Danzō had been with the Godiame’s decision to accept the alliance. _“We can’t make enemies where there are none,”_ was Tsunade’s reply when he casually voiced his concerns, but the Slug Princess turned Hokage was just as skeptical and wary of this so-called alliance as he was. However, she had to navigate the political waters of Konohagakure very carefully since the position of Hokage was coveted by a great many, and some of those people weren’t above a little backstabbing. 

There was a chance that Akatsuki’s invasion wasn’t just an attack from outside forces. There were enemies deeply rooted into the village, and he feared could very well already be on their doorstep. Kakashi tilted his head, glancing out of the corner of his grey right eye at the approaching pink haired young woman. Haruno Sakura was all that remained of Team Seven, bearing the full scrutiny of the citizens and shinobi because of her connection to both the Uchiha Sasuke, the traitor and Uzumaki Naruto, the Nine Tails Container. It wasn’t an easy burden to bear, but she endured and Kakashi had become painfully aware of how he had underestimated the milquetoast girl who had seemed a paper ninja at best. With pressure from the Council to mentor Sasuke and to keep a close eye on Naruto, Sakura had been doomed to slip between the cracks the moment she was placed on Team Seven. 

After Sasuke’s defection to the side of the mysterious figure going by the name Uchiha Madara and Naruto being taken out of the village to be tutored by Jiraiya, Kakashi was able to take Sakura under his wing and when he was sent out on ANBU missions—having been reinstated since the loss of so many good shinobi in the invasion—Lady Tsunade trained Sakura as her apprentice, having taking a shine to the pink haired girl. Sakura was intelligent and learned new techniques with a prodigy-like finesse, with the only drawback of her small chakra reservoir, though over the last two years she had greatly improved that as well. 

His only regret in her realizing her true potential was that she’d been on the front lines of the war. Her ability for close range fighting and her medical prowess would doom her to such fate. Weariness snaked through his veins, but he managed to crinkle his eyes in his signature smile. “Hello, Sakura,” he greeted his student, his cheerful tone sounded so genuine that only someone who knew him would know that it was completely forced. 

“Hello, Kaka-sensei,” Sakura responded, her voice quiet. There were dark circles that hung underneath her jade green eyes, and a weariness that slanted along the edge of her mouth. “How badly are you injured?” 

“Just scrapes, Sakura,” Kakashi said, with a shake of his head. “Nothing to concern yourself with. So, what are you doing with the rise of the sun?” 

“Couldn't sleep,” she said, with a shrug of her shoulder. “I can never go back to sleep. Once I am up, I am up for the day. I sought out Lee and we ran laps around the village.” 

Kakashi hummed, in the back of his throat. “Sounds nice.” 

“It was,” Sakura agreed, quietly. 

The morning dew soaked into the fabric of his clothing, but he stayed settled on the grass. He was unsurprised when Sakura decided to join him, folding the skirt beneath her knees to shelter from the cold ground. Every so often, his little student would join him here. She understood enough to know that he has lost, and that he had lost greatly, but she never asked—never pried like Naruto or Sasuke would have, which he was grateful for. Out of the three, Sakura always did possess the greatest tact and diplomacy. 

“Something on your mind?” asked Kakashi, after he let the silence dwell long enough. 

“I got another letter from Naruto.” 

Kakashi scratched his chin through the fabric of his mask. “That’s good that he keeps in touch.” 

Sakura nodded, after a hesitant pause. “He…he once again promised to bring Sasuke home…” 

Kakashi arched his brow. “Oh?” 

Sakura looked down at her hands that sat in her lap with shame etched onto her expression. “Sensei, I am not sure I _want_ Sasuke to come home. I feel so angry, and then I feel guilty for being angry, and—” Her voice shattered, a few tears leaking down her cheeks. She swiped them away, quickly and irritably. “I just don’t understand. He left his brother, he left the village, and joined someone who had hurt everyone who cared for him. He turned his back on everything, and people still want him back. The Akatsuki killed so many people, and he _chose_ them over us. He _abandoned_ us, and I can’t forget that. I can’t forgive that.” 

Kakashi felt a relief pool through his chest. He had been worried that Sakura wasn’t expressing her true feelings about Sasuke’s betrayal. With friends like Naruto and Ino, he felt that Sakura let her own voice get lost in the shadow of theirs. She had stated in the first few months of the invasion aftermath that she wanted Sasuke home, but there had always been a shadow in her expression. One that he recognized on his own face from time to time, that mixture of grief and rage that burrowed soul deep. 

Sakura had lost her parents in the invasion, and while Team Seven had clashing personalities, they had grown close after a series of dangerous missions. A friendship—fragile in its infancy—had blossomed, and it could have been something great. Like he, Obito and Rin could have been great. Sakura’s parents had welcomed Sasuke and Naruto in their home, giving the two boys a taste of something that had been sorely missing in their lives. That had to drive the knife deeper, Kakashi reasoned, that Sasuke so easily tossed that aside. He would have been worried if Sakura hadn’t harbored any hatred or dislike of Sasuke, after all of that. 

Kakashi rubbed he back of his neck, feeling a bit at a loss. He was not the best with emotional baggage, with the weight of his still heavy on his shoulders. Sakura was too smart to be placated with simple words, and he did not stand in her shoes, so he could not tell her how to deal with this. “I have a new teacher for you,” he commented, giving her a distraction from her grim thoughts. “You wanted to learn how to become a sensor, did you not?” 

Sakura perked up, looking at him expectantly. “You mean, you found someone willing to train me?” 

“I did.” Kakashi pushed him off the ground with a quiet grunt. He brushed off the stray bits of grass that clung to his britches and turned to Sakura with an eye smile. “I’ll introduce you to him now, if you want. I feel that I will be a poor mentor today.” 

A black mood lingered above his head, circling like a brewing storm. He wouldn’t be able to concentrate on teaching her anything new and having to juggle that with an incident report…it made him feel terribly old and exhausted. He placed his mask back on, and then sped across the glean with Sakura trailing behind. She was faster, he could tell with a bit of pride. He led her across the rooftops through the village; the streets slowly filled with people, and bit of idle chatter broke up the monotony. 

The civilians and shinobi lived in a symbiotic relationship. The farmers, merchants, shopkeepers, tended to be more civilian work, though there were some shinobi who retired into that kind of work for one reason or another. The shinobi were to protect the village, and to keep peace in their home country. The Kage and the Daimyo were two sides of the same coin, working in tandem for the better of the Nation. Though there were many times throughout history that balance of power turned into a power struggle, and it did not help that most civilians feared the shinobi and the violent nature of their work. 

There were moments of peril, when the civilian and shinobi worlds had collided that the civilians seemed grateful for the protection, but all too soon when stability returned did the civilians return to sticking their nose up at the shinobi. Kakashi envied the simplicity of their lives and hated their blissful ignorance, in equal measure. 

He dropped down into the garden of a home secluded on the outskirts of the Nara Forest, and pulled out his trusty Icha Icha Paradise, waiting until his little student fell in step with before he walked up towards the door. As soon as they stepped onto the porch, the door was pulled open with an ominous creak. 

Sakura went still, like she wanted to turn and run, but had forgotten how. He placed a hand on her shoulder and waved at the owner of the home with his book. “Sakura, you remember Sasuke’s older brother?” he asked, rhetorically. “Itachi, it’s been a while.” 

Uchiha Itachi stood in the doorway, wearing a green turtle-neck sweater and a pair simple black trousers. He was tall and of lanky build, that belied the strength and training that he had undergone throughout the years. His midnight colored hair was pulled out of his face, into a high ponytail and a pair of a glasses sat upon the bridge of his nose. The jet-black lens concealed his eyes. “Long time no see,” Itachi said, with a quirk of his lips. 

Sakura choked, while Kakashi let out a long awkward laugh. 

There was not a soul in the village that did not know his name. His high intellect saw him placed on the front lines of the war, one of the youngest shinobi ever to put into combat. His life had been riddled with hardship, right out of the womb with the burden of brining glory to the Uchiha Clan on his shoulders. He had chosen the village over his Clan, a shocking scandal when all was revealed. His parents and the elders of the clan had been put to death for their plans to overthrow Lord Third. Most of his adolescent had been filled with much tragedy, and his shinobi career came to a screeching halt when he was betrayed and his eyes stolen by the Missing-Nin, Shisui of the Body Flicker. 

The extensive rehab that he had to go through after losing his eyes had given the Council Elders enough leverage to pry primary custody of his younger brother from him, and he was raised by a council approved Uchiha couple. While Itachi got to be a part of his brother’s life, there had always been a filter and eyes on them the entire time that it damaged their sibling relationship beyond repair. Sasuke had started to come around, but then invasion happened, turning that all to dust. 

“You are late,” Itachi said, with a cluck of his tongue. “What is the point of making appointments early, if you never intend to be on time?” 

“A girl stopped me, so I danced,” Kakashi replied, with an eye smile. “Sakura played the music.” 

Sakura nearly facepalmed but managed to hold back the impulse. 

“Hmm, I believe you used that excuse two months ago. You must be running out of lines, or your memory is failing you in your old age,” Itachi commented, nonchalantly. His body shifted so that he faced Sakura, ignoring the way that Kakashi dramatically put a hand of his heart like he had been physically struck. “Sakura, it is nice to see you again.” 

“Uh, it is nice to see you as well,” Sakura replied, hesitantly. 

“You've come for sensory training, yes?” Itachi asked, head tilted. 

Sakura looked mighty tempted to tell him _no._ The pink haired chunin shot Kakashi, a long and dubious stare out of the corner of her eye. “I question your choices. _All_ the time,” she told him, plaintively. Her green eyes flickered to Itachi, and she bowed at the waist. “Thank you for your time, Itachi-san. I promise that you will not regret extending me this--a” 

“Haruno-san?” Itachi interjected, genially. “There is no need to stand on ceremony. I am no longer hold a shinobi rank, and I am not to heir to any great clan. Please come in and make yourself at home. I need to have a word with Kakashi, before I join you.” 

“Uh, right. Thank you,” Sakura mumbled, red-faced. 

Kakashi watched his student toss him one last glower and marched through the threshold with her head held high. It was no secret that Sakura had a crush on Itachi when she was younger, and that Sasuke had given the pink haired girl much grief over it. While her affections had eventually shifted to a beaming, blond loudmouth who loved orange a little too much, there was a chance that Sakura was probably still embarrassed and taken aback that Itachi was her new teacher. 

_I guess I should find someone else to care for Mr. Ukki,_ he thought, with a mild sigh. _Sakura is liable to kill him, just to spite for this._

“Have you heard what the weather will be like this week? I fear it will be a downpour,” asked Itachi, quietly. 

“Fair weather as far as the eye can see.” Kakashi casually plucked a note from the pages of his book, passing it to the younger man faster than the eye could catch. A letter from Jiraya, written in a specialized code that Itachi could read, with all the rumors and news about Sasuke. “But carry an umbrella. You never know when a cloudy day could cause a bit of rain.” 

Kakashi dissolved into a pile of swirling leaves and dropped onto the rooftop of his apartment. He plopped down onto the tiles, with his arms draped across his knees and he just looked up at the baby blue sky where not a single cloud was in sight. He couldn't bring himself just yet to go into his quiet and simple apartment, where the only thing that would keep him company is Mr. Ukki. And Mr. Ukki wasn't a big chatterbox. 

It was those moment, where the absolute void of noise consumed him and dredged up all that he wished he could just forget. A starving and frothing at the mouth beast, his thoughts were. All sharp teeth and ready to tear through his carefully crafted mask, trying to steal the good memories that held the shattered pieces of a broken man together. 

Rin and Obito—he tried to hold onto them, in small ways. If it weren't for Rin's voice in the back of his head, he wouldn't get up out of bed or remember to eat. She was like a guiding hand that always pulled him back from the brink, before he tumbled straight over into the abyss. He visited the memorial stone, for her because she no longer couldn’t and because he punished himself for not being able to save all those that he had lost. He spent hours in front of that stone, caught up in the haze of grief and when he was inevitably late...well, he took a page out of Obito's book. 

These little excuses that sounded too absurd to be real. It was only after Obito had died that he learned that those excuses hadn’t been excuses, but often the very truth. He was the Uchiha with a heart of gold, that stopped to help anyone who asked, even little old ladies who need help grocery shopping; he had spent hours wondering which tardy excuses were genuine and which weren't more times than he could count. 

It was easy to take the memories of them, filling in spaces between all his shattered pieces. The memories were never steady, not binding and he had to hold everything so tightly, or he would fall apart all over again. There were days that he let himself fall apart, let the old wounds bleed and cleansed himself of the sorrow in his soul. It never said clean, though. 

There was just too much blood on his hands for that. 

* * *

_Takigakure_

_12th August 2009_

Dark bluish, gray clouds swelled up in the sky and sheets of rain crashed down against the treetops in a deafening deluge while Aster Potter nudged deeper into the small alcove in the foothills to shield herself from the storm. With her dark hair plastered to her face and a gimlet-eyed stare, she looked like angry wet cat and her teeth chattered together while a chill sank bone deep into her limbs. Her clothing was completely soaked, and it was tempting to use her magic, but given the adverse effects that she had been receiving when casting spells stayed her hand. 

Chakra was more limited, having a heavy structure that imposed limits on just how far the abilities born from it could go. While certain abilities could be improved or invented, chakra was not boundless and infinite. Even the most powerful of chakra users had to work inside the confines of the laws and physics of how chakra could be manipulated and used. Magic, on the hand, was practically limitless, where the mind was the only limit imposed upon it. As long as the mind could conceive it, anything was possible and so the bonds of reality were able to stretch further and in much more unique ways than chakra. Where chakra had branches (such as lightning, fire, earth, etc.), magic could be used for a vast majority of things that it was mind boggling in comparison. 

Fuuinjutsu was creative enough in many ways, but still did not stretch to cover all the bases that magic could. But chakra had far deadlier application than magic did, even with the Dark Arts considered. Chakra was versatile to be used in attacks and battle, especially when it came to physical and hand to hand combat. Magic was more of long-distance fight, relying on agility and speed rather than strength. In a perfect world, Aster having two cores—one magical, one chakra—would seem completely ideal, making her more adaptable to harsh conditions of the world she now lived in. 

But an individual was meant to house only one type of core. The two cores had grown like two saplings that sprouted out of the ground only a foot apart. In the beginning, both shared the space and sunlight in harmony, but now that the cores had matured into fully grown trees, space was scarce, and the light struggled to shine through. The trunks of her cores were too close, and the branches creaked and groaned, painfully entwining with one another. A spell or jutsu caused a violently backlash that would echo through one core into the other and left her feeling like she was tearing herself apart from the inside out. 

Death had told her that a balance was possible, but that it would take time for her to find a way to master both of her cores, and thus her abilities. But Aster had never felt like time was on her side nor had it ever been any friend of hers. The seals imbedded into the flesh of her arms were a bleak reminder of the price she would pay in order to see those that she cared about once more, and after she was well enough to stand, Aster had solely focused on her goal with a vengeance. It was a danger task that could risk life and limb, but there was no other choice. 

And she finally caught up to the target that she had been tracking for the last week. 

She wasn’t ready. She knew this in her heart of hearts, but…she was desperate. Guilt set heavily in her lungs, thick and heavy like wet cement. Her chest rose and fell, on rapid breaths and her hazel eyes peered out through the wild thicket of foliage with a haunted look that she just couldn’t shake away. Her fingertips reached up to brush the broken hitae wrapped around her throat, the leaf symbol cleaved in half and scuffed up. Would it have been easier to have gone back? To search out for help, rather than face this all alone? Or would she have been treated with hostility and unkindness? 

The memories…they were broken, scattered across her mind and the pieces she did have were faded like old parchment paper. She couldn’t line the pieces up, couldn’t remember her story, and there was a fear embedded deep into her bones about going home. 

Aster never had a home. At least, not one that she remembered. She had thought Hogwarts was a home once, but that had turned out to be quite the lie, now didn’t it? And while there were these patches—glimpses of warm smiles, the smell of cherry blossoms, and a love that she longed to hold onto—she wasn’t sure how much she could trust them. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to trust them, she just didn’t know _how_ to. What if she went home, only to be rejected and shut out? 

It would break something fragile in her, something that had already been so battered and bruised that Aster could not risk it so easily. The shallow of her throat convulsed while she tried to swallow the lump of emotions wedged tight in the back of her mouth, and she pulled the cloak of invisibility around her tightly. It wasn’t a cloak anymore, so much as a tight fitted chest plate armor befitting of a ninja that she could activate on command. 

_“Less likely to trip over it and get yourself killed,”_ Death had explained. She was grateful for his foresight, and even more so for his help against Shinigami. 

A vision of Shinigami upon his bloody throne, built on the bones of the dead flared up in her mind. His golden iris glistened ominously, while she knelt in the darken chamber just on the outskirts of time. _“You need not be the arbiter of their demise, merely help_ seal _their fates,_ “ the Death God spoke, with a smirk that had his rotten and sharp teeth on full display. 

“I need to stop making deals with death,” she muttered, underneath her breath. She started forward once more, using the barest amount of chakra to boost her speed that would not cost her too greatly. It felt like an ache, a pulled muscle. Nothing that would hamper her when it came time to fight, though she hoped that what fight would occur would be brief and she could make a hasty escape. 

The forest began to clear away, the trees falling away to give a view of the clear sky and she came upon a dirt road. There were a series of footprints, fresh and distinct enough, that she could make out that a platoon of people had come through here recently. Ten or more individuals, by her count. She knew that there was supposed to be a Bounty Station somewhere in this vicinity. 

Given the notoriety of her targets, someone would have noticed if they passed through. It was possible to get answers, before her trail ran too cold. She started off at a full sprint and 

_“Seal their fates. Seal their fates. Seal their fates!”_ the Death God’s voice reverberated through her brain. It was a dark, ugly chant that spurred her forward with her heart jammed tight in the back of her throat. 

She could see the Bounty Station jutting up from the earth just upon the horizon, when she sensed a spike in chakra signatures just ahead. Her breath fluttered anxiously in her chest, and she pressed her palm against her armor activating the invisibility. She slid up against the side of the building, cautiously peeking around the corner to see a sight that made her eyes grow to the size of saucers. 

A silver haired man dressed in a black robe embossed with red clouds with a wicked looking scythe was surrounded by a group of six shinobi, impaled on various blades. There was no reason that he should be alive or standing, but the man just looked supremely annoyed. 

_Immortal and foul-mouthed,_ Aster thought, eyes narrowed. _That must be Hidan._

“Ah, that fucking hurt!” Hidan complained, a little bit blood leaking out of the corner of his mouth. 

The six shinobi that had attacked the missing-nin were visible shaken, and even Aster was taken aback by the way the man shrugged off the attack like it had been a bee sting, not his vital organs being pierced. There was no time to breathe, or to absorb the gravity of what this meant, for the building that she had been standing beside exploded. 

She was flung forward in the shower of debris, and if it had not been for her instinctual magic projecting a shield around her body, she would have been crushed like a bug underneath the wall that fell down towards her. She crawled on her hands and knees, out from underneath her and the magical shield broke. The strain on her cores rattled through her, and her knees nearly buckled out from underneath her. 

Fear rang hollow inside her head, drowning out her thoughts and allowing adrenaline to guide her way. She rose on her feet unsteadily, the thump of her heartbeat hammer at her temples and her breath scraped up out of her lungs. Her mind raced to form a strategy to close to Hidan in all the chaos and somehow manage to make it out alive. 

Hidan cracked a gruesome smile when the shinobi jumped away from him. A teenager was chased across the dusty road by another shinobi wearing the same red cloud robe as Hidan. _Fucking hell. This must be Kazuku,_ Aster thought, her mouth went dry with panic. _A two for one special?_

“Kazaku, stay out of this!” Hidan retracted his scythe, and his violet eyes flared with irritation. He placed his feet into his own blood that pooled at his feet and started to draw a pattern that eerily looked like a rune. Eerily like the Deathly Hallows, just with a few small changes. “Like they could pull it off. If they could kill me, I'd let 'em.” 

Aster could feel the power building in that blood. It was a dark, tempestuous power, born out of pain and agony, fueled by a thousand screams. It chipped away at the warmth in the air, until she could feel ice down into her soul and it reminded her of the frightening power that the dementors wielded. The only difference was that dementor devoured a soul with a kiss. Jashin devoured his victims, feeding on their pain and blood spilt, through Hidan. That symbol was the conductor, and she knew that she had to stop him. 

She lunged forward only to have a palm wrapped around her throat. The ironclad grip choked the breath out of her, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kazuku standing about a yard away from her. His arm was detached from his body, held on by these unearthly stitches, and his glowing green eyes set against black bore into her. 

“I told you that we were being followed,” Kazuku groused. 

Her invisibility flickered, like a broken project playing a film. Her fingers clawed at the ice-cold hand that lifted her off the ground. The tips of her toes scraped across the ground, but she couldn’t find an ounce of leverage. Dark spots danced in front of her vision and fear surged up her spine until it buzzed white hot at the base of her skull. 

“Nohora Rin.” Hidan licked the blood off his chin with relish, his purple eyes gleamed like wildfire. “Jashin _told_ me all about you, little ghost.” 

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: This will not follow the canon of Naruto or Naruto Shippuden. Obviously, it is fanfiction so it wasn’t ever going to heavily rely on the canon timeline, and the events do not follow the episode timeline. The episode with Asuma happened after Naruto returned to the village, but here it happens before that. Also, I love Sakura. Her character development for the most part in the manga and show was lackluster, and if only they invested in her a bit more than using her for “love-interest” and “damsel when convenient” then they could have shown her badassery more. So in all fanfic where she is a character, I do right by her and that's all I have to say. My thoughts and feelings on Kakashi are too long, so I'll stick to the cliff notes—I love him, and he is my fav.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much Scarlettravencrove, Tanya1999G, Pasithea, Nai0310, Irisdpeverell, Kismet, PureBloodAlchemyst, Opheliad, catschmi, StoryHabit, kuroneko22 and 8 guest for the kudos!  
> Thank you AlyssaLaylaVictoria, EvilIrishPixie, Cyotneuth, sidd12699yaoiryu, daydreamer1008, LynWhit3f13ld, KistuneMikoWitch, Linda95, killianariel18100, Awavinmvwnworld, kuroneko22 for the bookmarks. :D  
> Thank you Orlha and Kazuriyuko98 for the comments!

TWO 

Eight Months Earlier 

The Realm of Dead 

_The way forward was shut._

_Aster Potter felt panic and fear rippled through the cords of the universe, while she was caught in a place that existed outside of all realities. A cold and rotting world that crumbled all around her, shattering and collapsing into stardust. A hollow place where nothing stirred, only a draft stained by the odor of death and decay. The sky bled red, torn open like a wide, gaping, and pulsing wound. She stood in the archway of a ruined temple carved into bone white and brittle stone, walls crumbled underneath war and time. A bell clanged shrilly out of tune high above in the tower that cast a long and black shadow. This was not a place was not meant for mortal eyes. This was not a place for mortals to tread._

_The epiphany sent a shaft of ice splintering down her spine. Her eardrums pulsed to the beat of her heart, and the air rushed out of her lungs when she realized that she was alone. Her son was not there. Dobby, Winky, all the elves were gone. Her magic instinctively reached out, trying to find any hint or connection, but there was nothing. No strand, no thread for her to follow!_

_A powerful and ancient aura slammed down onto her back, clamping down on her magical core and sealed it shut tight. It was unexpected and so sudden that she staggered underneath the weight of it, barely able to keep her footing. She whipped around in a half circle, and then a gasp was torn out of her throat._

_A throne crudely crafted out of blood and bone jutted up out of the stone, the centerpiece of this unholy shrine, and upon that throne sat an embodiment of death. It was a demonic specter with long, shaggy white hair and red horns atop his head. He was enveloped in a flowing, blood splattered kimono, and silver prayer beads hung down around his neck. His skin was greyish purple, reminiscent of the way blood pooled in the face of the dead. A tanto clasped in his ghastly and monstrously, sharp teeth, and cursed seals were tattooed upon his arms. His golden irises encircled by black made his eyes unnerving, while he watched her with keen interest._

Shinigami, _her mind whispered, fearfully._

_She didn’t know how she knew. The knowledge sprang to life in her skull, a little droplet from the storm that raged inside. A cold and damp sweat broke out along her skin, and she unconsciously took a step back._

_“It is not often,” the Death God purred, “that a human has enough power to walk physically in my halls, Nohora Rin. Or is it Aster Potter now? You’ve had so many names and titles that it is so easy to get confused.”_

_A lump formed in her throat and her mouth ran dry with panic. It was obvious what had happened. In her attempt to cross dimension to get back home, she had stepped on a higher power’s toes._ What have I done? _she thought to herself._

_The Death that had helped her escape her old world appear in a shadowy mist at her side, ancient magic and power swirled around him in angry burst of lightning and wind. “Where are Teddy and the elves?” she asked, voice tight with panic._

_“Safe in a temporal pocket dimension,” Death replied. “I swear to you no harm has come to them.”_

_“You better be certain of that!” threatened Aster, darkly. “Or I swear by all the universes out there, that I will find a way to make your eternity as miserable as I possibly can.”_

_Death stared at her stonily for a hot moment before he turned his horrifying visage towards Shinigami. “What is the meaning of this, Shinigami?”_

_“My, my, you’ve been busy, Grim. Watching over you charge, have you?” asked Shinigami, in a snide tone. “You know that the girl was original mine, don’t you? I should have had first bid upon her soul.”_

_“You wasted your chance by sentencing her to an early grave.”_

_Shinigami chuckled, darkly. “She was not so interesting back then, as she is now.”_

_Death placed a hand on Aster’s shoulder. “You have no power to stop her from returning. She is no simple mortal to be swayed by the whims of would-be gods.”_

_That rankled Shinigami’s shackles. His eyes narrowed into slits, his mouth tightened around his tanto and the blade bit into his purple skin. Black and congealed blood oozed out of the wound, making Aster’s stomach turn unpleasantly. The ground beneath her feet trembled, and the sky darkened until light could not exist. The realm around them reacted to Shinigami’s emotions and his fury filled the air bitter as sulphur and decaying flesh. The fury drained as swiftly as it had risen, Shinigami sank back into his thrown and the light returned to the world, the shadows receded away._

_“Do not assume that I have brought you here out of ill-will. My slighted pride from the soul taken from my realm is with the caster on the other side, this Dumbledore. I have no quarrel with the witch, merely wish to avert disaster that her return will ultimately cause.”_

_“What do you mean?” asked Aster, cautiously._

_“The laws of each world are unique to its own universe. There are a number that share similarities, but ultimately different. This world—your home world—is a balance of order and chaos, and if the scales were to tip too far in one direction or another, the repercussions could be catastrophic. If it were merely you who wished to return, then scales would be able to handle the sway and even out within time,” Shinigami responded, stroking the tanto with a long, bony finger. “But you did not come here alone, now did you?”_

_Her blood ran cold as ice._

_“Ah…mortal fear.” Shinigami inhaled deeply. “I forgot…how _intoxicating_ the aroma was.”_

_Trepidation coiled as a knot that burned like a cinder in the back of her throat, and she wondered if she had desperate to escape from one danger only to stumble into another. She glared up at the Death God, her green eyes diamond bright with rage and she turned her head to look over the Death that she knew. The grim reaper stood there vigilant and silent. “Is that true?” the witch questioned, a deep and severe frown on her lips. “Would it be catastrophic to bring Teddy and the elves through?”_

_“Not all change is harmful,” Death commented, with a subdued tone. “The laws of your birth world are far different than the Wizarding World. There is no magic there, but a lifeforce known as chakra. The exposure to magic could upset the natural order of things. The world will accommodate you with no trouble given your previous existence and your bond to me, making you exempt to a certain degree. You alone would not upset things, but multiple beings with magic? Shinigami does speak an amount of truth, unfortunately.”_

_“So everything I did was for nothing? I brought us all this way, only to fail?” she asked, with a heart-wrenching expression. She could not doom a world to destruction, no matter how great or small, just for the sake of her own personal peace and happiness._

_“There are ways to minimize such an impact that you and those you carry with you would make upon the world. Your entrance would be…most accepted,” Shinigami spoke up, his serpentine tongue darting out to lick the dried blood off his face, “if you were to take measure to preserve the delicate balance.”_

_“So you did not just bring us here to be the bearer of bad news, after all. What are you after, Shinigami?” Death questioned, suspiciously._

_“Nothing beyond the dear witch’s capabilities, I assure you.”_

_“Was that meant to be reassuring?” asked Aster, harshly. Her heartbeat thumped wildly at the base of her neck. A suffocating sensation pressed in on her from all sides, where the air was made too thin to draw in and her blood ran colder than the artic._

_“My patience is not infinity,” Shinigami said. Each word bit out through fanged teeth, voice pitched lower and held a rumbling of thunder. “Do not test it.”_

_Death huffed mildly. “Hear his proposition. Even if he is loathed to admit weakness and that he has no further claim on your spirit, Shinigami is fair in his dealings. If not a bit mischievous,” Death added, with a stink eye in the direction of the Death God._

_The urge to rant and rage coiled in her stomach. The injustice of being a pawn on a gameboard once more surged through her, a festering wound that was far from healed. The childish urge to spit on the offer came and gone in the blink of an eye. And then she was left tired—so tired and exhausted, drained until she felt nothing but numb. Her chest contracted on a sharp sigh._

_“What is your offer then?” asked Aster._

_Shinigami leaned forward, with his mouth drawn in a smile. “There are a number of individuals who attempt to outmaneuver death and achieve immortality—or as close to immortality that a mortal can claim,” the Death God spoke, his tone deceptively soft. He reached up with his claws, pulling the tanto free from his mouth and gestured for the witch and Death to step forward._

_Aster did so with great reluctance, and when she stood before the throne, an invisible force drove her to her knees. Her kneecaps smacked against the stone with a loud clap, and the force of it rattled the teeth in her jaw. She heard Death’s noise of discontent behind her, but after it was apparent that Shinigami held no malicious beyond trying to assert dominance over the situation, the witch allowed herself to relax just a margin._

_“You want me to eliminate them? Like I did with Voldemort?” she inquired._

_“You need not be the arbiter of their demise, merely help_ seal _their fates,” the Death God spoke, with a smirk that had his rotten and sharp teeth on full display. “A cursed seal that you will brand onto their souls. It is a fūinjutsi that no mortal hands can create, and it will bind their spirits to their mortal coil leaving them unable to escape or outrun death thereafter.”_

_The proposal…could have been worse. It was not nearly as bad as Aster had imagined and her imagination could conjure the things of nightmares given enough time to let dark thoughts to fester. That didn’t mean that she was ready to agree. She was still leery about entering a deal with god, even if Death had vouched for him. “And my family in the meantime?” she questioned, shrewdly._

_“Time is not a linear path. Whatever time passed for you will be the blink of an eye for them. As far as they will be concerned, the spell and travel will be as it was intended,” Shinigami promised, with a slight roll of his eyes. “I do not condone the harm of innocents, even if I revel in death and fear.”_

_As her palms soaked with sweat, Aster clenched her hands into fists. Her jaw worked up and down, and then taut line of her shoulders released on a sigh. “It seems that I have no choice,” she said, softly. “Who are my targets?”_

_Shinigami grinned, knowing that he had her hook, line, and sinker. He held out his palm and slowly Aster placed her hand in his, grunting as he pulled her harshly across the stone. “Kazuku is an abomination of the highest kind. He used a kinjustu that allows him to house five hearts inside of his body and from those hearts he prolongs his longevity and give him special abilities. Though hopefully you will be smart enough to avoid finding out. The seal for him,” Shinigami said, while dragging the tip of the tanto along her bare arm and intricate lines appeared on her flesh with a burning hiss, “will prevent him from devouring new hearts to sustain his life. Any new hearts will rot and make him violently ill.”_

_The seal carved into her flesh, sending agony shooting across all her nerve endings. Her stomach heaved, an acidic burn rushing up the length of her esophagus that she barely choked down in the nick of time. Beads of sweat dotted her brow, her eyes green eyes held the Death God’s gaze unblinkingly._

_“And what does it take to kill him? Not that I will go looking for a fight, but plans never—well, they never go according to plan,” the witch spoke, through clenched teeth._

_Shinigami laughed, lightly. It was a terrifying sound. One that send shivers down her spine, and fear to gnaw painfully at her heart._

_“Five hearts. Five lives,” Death offered, his bony hands clasped together behind him as he strode towards the throne. “No more hearts. No more lives.”_

_“So the hearts act like a horcrux housed inside of him?” Aster hissed out. The maddening pain nearly rivaled that of the Cruciatus Curse. Her muscles quivered and ached, causing a raw scream to erupt out of her throat when the seal flared with bright light. She swung unsteadily, with Shinigami’s iron grip keeping her from faceplanting into the stone floor. “You son of bitch! You are making it painful on purpose!”_

_Shinigami had an unholy grin on his face._

_“In a sense,” Death answered her question, after a beat._

_“Hidan worked as a bounty hunter alongside of Kazuku. His immortality is relied upon his connect to Jishan, a god of great evil and cruelty.”_

_“A god?” Aster asked, wide eyed._

_“Jishan was once a mortal—a sadist with an unquenchable bloodlust. In art long since forgotten, he found a way to remove himself from the physical plane but found that torn away from mortal trappings that he was fading from existence. He found a way to enter mortals dreams and convinced him that he was divine. Faith can be powerful to those that exist outside of flesh and are wholly spiritual beings,” explained Shinigami, with a vehement anger. He proceeded to start the next seal without so much as a warning, and the pain exploded against the back of her eyeball with all the force of a mallet. “His priests would spill oceans of blood in his name, and he would feed on those poor souls. He was eventually able to link his life force to his supplicants, given them an illusion of immortality though eventually most were slain, until only Hidan remained. This seal will shatter that connection, and Jashin will wither away, and Hidan will become all too human. Two for the price of one.”_

_“Anyone else on your hit list?” Aster slurred out._

_“Orochimaru is the most dangerous. He will also bring you the most despair as he greatly resembled the Dark Wizard you fought in your Wizarding War, and I imagine those memories…are unpleasant,” Shinigami stated, forming the final seal._

_An ear-splitting scream ripped out of Aster. Her back bowed so far back and she no longer had control of her body. It flailed and twisted, rippling with the waves of agony. Her soul felt twisted and shattered, unraveling at the seams, then the pain was gone. Aster was tossed back against the stone, like a broken doll, quivering in the aftermath._

_Shinigami stared at her indifferently. “His intelligence is unrivaled, and his skills had made him a shinobi to be feared throughout the ages. He is a psychopath in every sense of the word, with the ability to jump into bodies of his followers if his body is destroyed._

_The Death God and his throne faded into obscurity, concealed by swirling vortex of dark clouds and lightning. Death—her Death, helped haul her off the ground. He helped her walk across the barren wasteland, guiding her to who the fuck knew. She floated in between all too numb and excoriating pain, going through the motions._

_She had fought and failed up an ambivalent façade in front of the Death God, but now that she stood outside of his vision on the precipice of her new reality, her mask completely fractured. Her eyes filled with tears while she stared down at the seals that branded her arms, and she found it extremely hard to breathe when her throat swelled up shut. She felt raw, wounds all exposed and unraveled at an atomic level. Bitterness swirled heavy in her gut, and she resented Death even as he gave her a shoulder to lean on. Her eyes were green flames._

_“Did you know?” she asked, hoarsely._

_Death sighed. “It was a possibility. One does not leap between worlds without garnering attention.”_

_Aster glowered at him. “You should have warned me.”_

_“Would it have stopped you?”_

_She paused. Her stomached was knotted and threaded her hand into her hair. She hovered on the edge of panic attack and struggled to find her voice. “I—I don’t know. I might…I might have thought twice about it,” she admitted, quietly._

_Death had brought to the edge of a cliff. Her eyes looked down, drawn to the basin of light that sat at the bottom of the cliff. It was so far down—too far down! A sudden burst of vertigo slammed through her, and she clenched her eyes shut. She didn’t dare open them until the nausea and panic subsided enough for her to keep it leashed._

_“The organization that Kazuku and Hidan will not take threats to them lightly,” Death warned her, gravely._ Pun well intended. _“Orochimaru runs a deep underground operation that spans across many nations, but there are those that are willingly to weed out his influence. Understand that by attacking them you will find yourself with no shortage of enemies. It is impossible to avoid.”_

_“So, I’ve traded one war for another, and I’ve dragged the people who trusted me and depended upon me into that danger,” Aster responded, voice coated in anger and self-loathing. “Just my fucking luck.”_

_Death sighed, lightly. “This world needs you, Aster Potter, and…you need it whether you want to admit or not. You don’t have to be a savoir. You don’t have to play the hero. But you will have to fight to build a home here and keep your precious people safe. You’ve come this far, but how much farther are you willing to go from here?”_

_For a moment, she stood there motionless while a gust of wind sped by them. The strands of her hair tossed about her face, and she stared deep into the glowing abyss below. It beckoned to her, urging her to leap and plummet towards it and she knew in that moment that what she had said to Shinigami remained true. There was no other choice to be made. She raised her chin and turned to look Death straight in the eye._

_“However far it takes.”_

_And then Death shoved her off the cliff, into the abyss._

It started out as a small pain. 

Like the small prick of pain from a bee sting, until it blossomed and unfolded like a crimson flower in the skull. A mass of brain tissue and blood created; the sophisticated organ formed, the great many parts ranging from the prefrontal cortex all the back to the basal ganglia created in the blink of an eye. A flood of synapses firing erratically when the broken and decomposed body stirred in its tightly packed grave. There was no thought, no sense of self right away, only a building agony of existence. A body enfolded into a body, two lives merging in memory and flesh, an impossibility that only could be guided into life by Death itself. A wave of magic converged around the skeleton, sending a shockwave into the soil, and cracked open the earth to expose the long-decomposed body to the air for the first time in sixteen years. 

The bones creaked and groan, growing at an incredible rate from the frame of an adolescent into adulthood. An explosion of muscle and tendon wrapped around bones. A mass of veins and nerves snaked around the body from head to toe, built in a matter of seconds with a skill that no doctor could match. The vital organs remade and churning violently to start working anew. Teeth cracked into place, fixed into the jaw while eyeballs were formed in sockets. Lungs pulled in air desperate and needy. Every flaw and injury mended, and as soon as the esophagus and vocal cords were formed, the jaw cracked wide open with an unearthly scream. 

The scream lasted forever. It stretched onward while skin spread out covering the writing mass of muscle and sinew, turning her into something more human than a ghoulish nightmare. Tendrils of dark hair erupted out of her scalp, falling around her shoulders in untamed waves. Her eyes were wide and wild, a hunted gleam bright in them. Her trembling her fingers pressed to the scarred tissue just above her thundering heart. She trembled like a leaf, while tears ran like a waterfall down her cheeks. 

Her scream choked off into dry sobs, and everything _hurt_. The _whole_ world hurt. The mild air that brushed across her skin might as well have been razor blades. The texture of the soil against her skin grated, and the tattered rags of clothing she had smothered her. The silence of the night dug into her eardrums, sharp and bitter. 

Rin—Aster, she didn’t know. The two strands of memories twined together like imperfected jewels in her mind. New knowledge, old knowledge, all crammed into brain so fast that it gave her whiplash. She does not recall the passage of time from where she sat there, an emaciated sack of flesh that was rooted to the spot in shock and lost in an emotional upheaval, to when she rose to her feet. Her enchanted bag—which provided to her by Death—and the shinobi headband with a leaf engraved upon it were clasped in a knuckle white grip. The blue fabric crumbled, but the rusted metal was firm. The inky dark beneath the canopy of trees seemed to expand and then ebbed, as if it were breathing, and she felt panic prickle across her flesh. 

She had no source of illumination. All she could do was stumble through the dark and steep terrain, tripping over rock and roots, on weak and unsteady feet. The air filtered in and out of her body burned, and the tears wouldn’t stop coming. Her mind had shut down in an effort to preserve her sanity, and all she could do was let her feet blindly guide her forward. 

* * *

_Takigakure_

_12th August 2009_

_Bounty Station_

Aster’s scalp tingled with fear and panic. A shiver skittered up her spine, her body got in the throes of fight or flight. The hand around her throat was painfully tight, and she could only draw in fleeting scraps of air. Her eardrums thudded to the beat of her pulse, wild and untamed. As her palms soaked with sweat, she realized that she needed to do something and fast. Magic churned through her veins, building and building, until lashed outward in a wave of pure energy. It forced Kazuku to release her, and she was quick to put distance between them. The rebound of her instinctual magic was instant and agonizing, knocking the wind out of her lungs and dark spots formed as she tried to force her vision on the battle around her. 

She heard the rushed sound of feet, and her hands flashed through a series of symbols. She saw the flash of a scythe before the world swirled into a blur of colors, and Hidan sliced through the log that had replaced at her in the blink of eye. Aster slammed into the ground just on the edge of the forest, adrenaline slid through her blood, cold and heavy as mercury. She tasted pennies on the back of her tongue, and she spit out a mouthful of blood with a soft groan. Her nails scraped against the dirt, feeling as though an icepick was driven into the back of her skull and then set on fire. Her thoughts were tangled and constricted by the flood of pain, as she grappled to her feet. 

The disadvantage she had against the pair of immortals was glaring, to say the least. Her brief existence as Nohora Rin had not given her a chance to hone her skills to the full potential, and she had been nowhere close to their level. Her magic could give her edge, but at great cost. 

“Don’t interfere, Kazuku!” Hidan ordered. “This one is mine!” 

Kazuku let out a sigh of exasperation but turned his attention on the shinobi that watched the proceedings on pins and needles. He rushed them, a blur of black and red, and the battle erupted into a frenzy of motion. A blend of ninjutsu and taijutsu that Aster could barely track with her eyes. Not that she got to play spectator for long with Hidan out for her blood. 

The seals flared and shuddered against her flesh, eagerly. The Death God’s words were a chant that sang in her ears, over and over until the words overlapped and became unintelligible. Her eyes were locked with her opponent, for a split second where time slowed to a crawl, held back by dread and panic. And then the world released its breath when determination blazed white hot in her chest. 

There was no _other_ choice. 

She _would_ see her son again. She _would_ see her friends again. Her mismatched family would not spend eternity bound in a timeless abyss, unaware of their imprisonment. It was her miscalculation that had caused this. Her arrogance to think that she could cross worlds unaffected. She had to make it right and this was her only way. Failure was not an option. 

Hidan charged towards her like a bull, and she summoned the Sword of Gryffindor in time to block the sharp end of the scythe. The blades clashed with a metallic ring that echoed through the area, and the force from the attack knocked Aster back a few inches. 

Explosions rocketed the earth beneath her feet, rubble and soil was brought from the clash downwind. The cries of battle were underscored by the tempo of her heart. Her green eyes spat fire at Hidan. She caught the widening of the missing-nin’s grin before the battle began in earnest. The whirlwind of motion and steel, sword and scythe tolled together in fury, almost too fast for the eye to see. Her lungs felt too small in her chest, and fear punctuated every breath. Her body relied solely on muscle memory, flowing in techniques that her conscious thought could not recall. She had honed her speed and agility in both of her lives, out of the necessity of survival, but it wasn’t enough. 

Hidan was the more skilled warrior. He had decades—perhaps, even centuries—to refine his skill with a blade and other deadly techniques. All she was doing was out dancing death by the skin of her teeth, and her luck would not last all that long. Pain seared through her side when the scythe bit into her rib cage, tearing through her leather armor. Drops of her blood splattered to the ground. 

Hidan inhaled deeply, then a lewd moan fell from his lips. “ _Oh_ , you are just _ripe_ with power, aren’t you? Jashin shall be pleased when I spill all your pretty blood in his name.” 

Aster recoiled despite herself. The sheer amount of revulsion that flooded through her at his sick enjoyment, reminded too greatly of Bellatrix LeStrange. A blue fire burst to life, ensnaring Hidan in its grasp, and the witch choked on blood. The spell had been worth it to gain a bit of distance between her and the immortal sadist. She watched with horrified fascination that Hidan relished in the flames, grinning manically while its seared bits of his flesh until it charred and cracked. He waded through the fire slowly, savoring the heat when tendrils of shadows snaked across the ground towards him. 

Hidan dodged the attack swiftly. Annoyance and anger twisted his features into something dark and unholy, his eyes pinned a young shinobi that couldn’t be more than fifteen years old whose head weirdly resembled that of a pineapple. The shock and panic crossed the boy’s face swift as lightning, and almost as swift as the scythe that arced through the air towards him. 

_“Protego maxima!”_ shouted Aster, her hand sliced through the air. 

The shield of blue encased the teenager— _too young, children on a battlefield, bodies piled high, “Minato-sensei, I’m—”_ and then pain tore through her never endings as the visions faded. The scythe was buried into the shield, causing wide-spread fractures in the safeguard and the tip of the blade was only a scant inch from the boy’s face. 

Her heartbeat was erratic, thumping wild and uneven in the center of her throat. Her outstretched hand shook, the blood vessels bursting beneath her skin while she forced the magic to hold true and keep the shield alive. Sweat rolled down her cheeks mingled with tears of pain, but it was seconded by the relief that pooled in the marrow of her bones. Her hazel eyes swept to Hidan, the green flecks—the trace of Lily that remain in her adopted daughter—burned acidic and bright. 

“You leave that kid the fuck alone, do you hear me?” said the witch, with a guttural snarl. The chakra and magic crackled inside of her, flaying her molecule by molecule. The more she used her abilities, the bigger the war within her became. If she were not careful, she could unravel to the point that she would erase herself completely, but she couldn’t allow innocents to come to harm if she could stop it. “You’re fight is with me, remember? I believe you said your _so-called_ god had a bone to pick with me.” 

There was nothing that upset a zealot faster than doubting their leader or god. The blanket of undulated rage that burned in Hidan was palpable, thickening the air until it was difficult to breathe. His head swiveled towards her in a way that seemed unnatural, and she had only a split second to feel the flash of apprehension before he was there. 

A burst of _expelliarmus_ to cause his weapon to fly out of his hand, and she drew the sword around in a wide arc, fighting through the pain. He leapt out of the way to dodge the most severe damage, but the blade nicked him across the belly. The cut was shallow and tearing a hole in his cloak, and Hidan laughed cruelly. “The fuck was that supposed to do, bitch? That barely even tickled!” 

Aster’s eyes narrowed in grim satisfaction. “Basilisk venom is quite potent.” 

“Wh—” Hidan’s face fell. He had a strange and vacant stare before his skin turned an ashen color, a telltale sign of the poison that worked like quicksilver. He let out a low and slow hiss, running his hand across the torn cloak. His hand came away with a smear of blood, and his muscles began to twitch uncontrollably. “Now, isn’t that just fucking something! That burn… _so good!”_

She made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat. The witch doubted that the basilisk venom would be enough to kill the immortal. His connection to Jashin would see to that, but her hope was that it would weaken him just enough for her place the blasted seal on him. She lunged towards him, and he blocked her sword with his scythe. He shoved upward, ducking underneath her arms and around her at a blinding speed. 

He was at her back and she turned, only to feel a pain erupt across her shoulder blade when he used the chakra enhanced chain to pull his scythe back to him. Flesh and sinew torn straight to the bone and a waterfall of blood poured down her back. She staggered away, using chakra to skid ten feet away and collapsed to her knees. Her eyes widened when she saw Hidan start to draw a symbol in the ground. A symbol that looked eerily like an invert of her Hallows and an aura of death enveloped her, wrapping around her tight like a noose. 

That is when the epiphany struck her, nearly knocking the wind out of her. 

Jashin had been connected to Shinigami as she was connected to Death. Jashin had somehow perverted that connection and disavowed Shinigami, and that was a slight that no god could ignore. It explained why Shinigami held more contempt and rage in his voice towards Hidan and Jashin, than Kazuku and Orochimaru. He saw it as a bigger insult to his power to have one of his own betray him. 

And here she was, stuck in the middle of two gods pissing contest. 

_Fuck my life!_ she thought, angrily. 

The shinobi that stood against Kazuku weren’t doing very well. Two ninjas were dead. One with his head severed, and the other with guts hanging out. >Kazuku was unpredictable in the abilities he could use. The five hearts allowed him to use different chakra elements and gave him a range that other shinobi’s could only dream of. His attacks were vicious and meticulous, a product of perfect precision and skill that relied on cold logic rather than fueled by emotions. It was probably the Akatsuki’s hope that he would balance out Hidan’s white-hot temperament. 

The leader of the shinobi group— _Asuma,_ the name came to her with the image of a young boy with a cocky little grin—did a technique where he released a flammable smoke from his mouth. The dark, greyish cloud expanded at a rapid pace and then when it had wrapped up Kazuku, the shinobi snapped his teeth together and it ignited. The battleground lit up in a bright flash, a rush of heat that was swiftly followed by an earth-shattering explosion. The blast shattered the base the bounty station, causing the building to crumple with a loud rumbled. A cloud of dust and debris so thick that it choked out the sun, and an unearthly silence descended upon them. 

With her breath caught tight in her throat, the witch waited for Hidan to launch his next attack when pain blistered up her thigh. She couldn’t hold back the scream, and her hand grasp her upper thigh. It was slick and wet with blood; a wound that appeared from nowhere. 

_No,_ she thought, jittery. _Not from nowhere._

It held the same taste of that sickly and evil atmosphere that the symbol of Jashin—the one that Hidan had painted with her blood! Her heartrate spiked with a burst of a pure adrenaline, remembering the only other time that her blood was used in a macabre ritual. The intent of the ceremony was easy to decipher from what Shinigami had told her, and the rest she was sense because her magic was going haywire. This ritual was meant to syphon the lifeforce through violence, until the soul was weakened for Jashin to devour. 

There were these darken strands, invisible to the naked eye that attempted to slither underneath her skin and burrow straight into her soul. If it weren’t her own connection to Death, Aster was not sure that she would have been able to see the cords. A pulse of magic made the strands recoil, but they did not dissipate. Her mouth ran dry with fear, watching the cords of dark magic circle around her vulturous. 

As the dust cleared, her eyes caught Hidan’s. He stood upon the symbol with a triumphant smirk on his features, and scythe buried into his leg in the exact spot that her mysterious wound had appeared. He had to inflict damage to himself to complete the rite, and the fact that he was immortal meant that he wasn’t afraid to make things lethal. 

Aster was not sure what her owning the Deathly Hallows meant, or if immortality was truly a gain from possessing all three, but that did not mean she wanted to test the theory. Her eyes saw the black veins that twisted up the length of his neck and jaw; the basilisk poison had forced him to play his trump card early. And that, she decided, gave her the little bit of hope that she sorely needed. 

With a bloody and quivering hand, Aster drew the mark of the Hallows upon her forehead. It was a power that she never wanted. A power that she swore only to use once. Her oath to herself broken by desperation and desire to see her child and friends again, so she couldn’t die here. As soon as the final line was painted on her flesh, the air shifted threateningly. The scent of death and power saturated her every pore, and her magic flowed easier with the assistance. Her chakra was muted, shoved down though she didn’t look forward to the aftermath of this little stunt. 

The black threads of Jashin’s power fled and retreated into Hidan. The look of utter shock and confusion on the immortal’s face was priceless. “What the _fuck_ are you?” 

“And here I thought your god told you all about me,” the witch taunted, with a blood-stained smile. 

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: Aster isn’t…dealing. She is very much charging forward and not dealing with the emotional aspect of what she has been through. It wasn’t highlighted in this chapter with everything going on, but it will become more apparent as the story pushes forward. I also really wanted to use a different way to describe Shikamaru’s hairstyle that wasn’t pineapple, but when I really thought about it, that fit the way that Potter described people in the people in the HP Series. So I decided to roll with it. lol  
> REFERENCES AND SPELLS  
> 1.) Protego Maxima—is a shield charm that can be cast on others or be used with other spells to form a barrier. (was used in the Battle for Hogwarts.)  
> 2.) Expelliarmus—the disarming spell.


End file.
